dreamingxashley wrote:Ive always wondered how you get Japan out of Nihon. I can sorta see the h being mispronounced as p, but n is a little way off from sounding like j...

The story goes that when Marco Polo visited China, they told him about an island to the east known as "xir-pon" (or something close), which, in the Chinese of the day, was the Chinese reading of the two characters 日and 本.

Marco Polo transcribed that Chinese into Latin as "Japon," which over the years became "Japan."

It's funny to think that the word has now come full-circle, and that the Japanese will often use the katakana version ジャパン in the same sense that (back in the States) we would say "All-America..."